I have arrived at the “Google Calendar” phase of adulthood. This stage is defined by its key ritual: trying to meet up with friends, but never doing it.
It goes like this. A friend and I decide to meet. Calendars tell us the next mutual free evening is in two months, due to work, family, health and love commitments, as well as an enforced limit on fun slots to maximise productivity.
Quickly the evening is upon us, but suddenly it’s an inconvenience. As with all tight schedules, nothing’s gone to plan, and now we’re behind on work/spin classes/bathing the cat. Something has to give. We raincheck. Now, repeat this process every fortnight with a rolling cast of friends until an obligatory celebration (birthday, housewarming), when a meeting does take place.
I’m not complaining. I, too, am a friend who flakes, who overestimates my time and energy. But I haven’t made peace with it. Having fun has been integral to my character for years; seeing it give way to productivity is a strange feeling. I wonder if these years are a twilight before the proper grownup action begins (children, mortgages, couples squash matches), but decidedly after the years where a hangover didn’t matter and an “unpredictable evening” wasn’t finding someone’s pissed in the wheelie bin.
I say this to my fortysomething hairdresser, who tells me about her last “big night out”: a house party, a one-night stand, a three-month heartache.
Want the social life of a 23-year-old? It comes with a helping of the heinous: surge pricing for a taxi, a stolen wallet, toxic people left unchallenged because they serve a purpose or plug an insecurity. And I wonder if I have outgrown the resilience (read: stupidity) required to hack it, and how it can be that I am looking back with nostalgia already? Surely I’m not old enough for that?
